The aim of this research project is to provide a semantic re-definition of a series of notions and categories – i.e.: multiculturalism and hybridization, hegemony and subordination, community and difference – whose meanings, today, seem to be utterly confusing, and therefore insufficient to define contemporary reality. To accomplish that task, we propose to carry on a comprehensive analysis of literary discourses and cultural narratives, as they have developed within the various national contexts, both in Europe and in the Americas. Art’s complex and reflexive nature, in fact, has not only managed to expose the inconsistency of a world all too often described as homogeneous, global, and substantially uniform, but frequently it has also disclosed the limits of a massive expansion of public demands and needs. It is precisely because of its natural tendency to stray from the hegemonic discourse that literature provides single readers with a unique chance to participate in the overturning of interpretive paradigms, by opening a variety of virtual alternatives to norms commonly considered immune to criticism. For this reason, particular attention will be given to all literary expressions that, both in Europe and in the Americas, since last Century have somehow objected to use, or altogether refused to acknowledge, hermeneutical models designed to decipher and eliminate the complexities of a world which, instead, keeps being substantially intricate and obscure. The project’s ultimate goal is the making of a thesaurus, or dictionary, as a basis for the critical assessment of all phenomena that, at least as far as a limited number of European and American cultures are concerned, escape the limited range of traditionally accepted cultural definitions.

Starting point for the research proposal is the decomposition and the subsequent re-composition of the geopolitical map after the Fall of the Berlin Wall on November 9th 1989 and after the opening of the border’s gates to West Europe, which made an end to East Europe regimes.Common thread, which links together some keywords of the German and the East European culture after the “Wende”, such as ‘history’, ‘identity’, ‘nostalgia’, is the wide and heterogeneous concept of ‘memory’, meant as individual memory, as well as collective memory.The project aims at retracing, contextualizing and emphasizing the removed traces of the past and at creating at virtual map of the extinguished places through a recognition, which considers macro-landscapes and macro-places (the whole urban area), as well as micro-realities (such as the toponym’s transformation).The scientific goal of the project is the confrontation of the collected historical-cultural elements with literary, cinematographic and visual elements, based on the narrative description of memory’s places.Through the realization of three data-bases and with the help of a computer scientist, the project finally aims at creating a multilingual website (Italian, German, Polish and Russian), by producing an operating system, which can also support the student’s activities.

Starting point of the research is the re-definition of the new metropolis after the fall of the “Walls” and the opening of the border gates within Europe. As an innovative goal, the project aims at evaluating how the radical urban changes, subsequent to the transformation of the geo-political landscape, have been accepted, recognized and elaborated through literature, cinema and visual arts and their languages/experiences. The evolution of European metropolis will be analyzed as an experimental laboratory and compared to the urban design of extra-European cities in order to identify common features and mutual influences with a crossed-glance at the “other”. This will demonstrate how the image of the “other” proves to be critical to the definition of national identity. Through the making of a visual map, which will show the transformations of urban spaces, the project will also examine the relationship between memory and planning. The scientific goal of the project, which is meant to be interactive and interdisciplinary, is the confrontation of the collected historical-cultural documents, on the one hand with urban and architectural elements and on the other hand with literary, cinematographic and visual elements, based on the narrative description of the metropolis changes. Through the realization of a web-site with the help of a webmaster, the project finally aims at creating a multilingual website (Italian, German, Polish and Russian), by producing an operating system, which can also support the student’s activities.